Nakhichevan is both the name of a city and historical region located in the
Armenian highlands in the
South Caucasus. Until the demise of
Safavid Iran, Nakhichevan was under the administrative jurisdiction of the
Erivan Province (also known as Chokhur-e Sa'd). Shortly after the recapture of Yerevan in 1604 during the
Ottoman–Safavid War of 1603–1618, then incumbent king (
shah)
Abbas I (r. 1588–1620) appointed as its new governor Cheragh Sultan Ustajlu, who, after his brief tenure, was succeeded by
Maqsud Sultan. Maqsud Sultan was a military commander who hailed from the
Kangarlu branch of the Ustajlu tribe, the latter being one of the original
Qizilbash tribes that had supplied power to the Safavids since its earliest days. The Kangarlu were described by J. M. Jouannin as “a small tribe established in
Persian Armenia on the shores of the
Aras". Later that year, as Ottoman forces threatened the area during the same war, Shah Abbas ordered Maqsud Sultan to
evacuate the entire population of the Nakhichevan region (including the
Armenians of Julfa, who, in the following year, were transplanted to
Isfahan, Qaraja Dag (
Arasbaran) and Dezmar. Persian rule was interrupted by
Ottoman occupation in 1635–1636 and 1722–1736. It officially became a fully functioning khanate under the
Afsharid dynasty. Initially, the territory of Nakhichevan was part of the
Erivan Khanate, but later came to be ruled by a separate khan. Following the
Treaty of Georgievsk in 1783 between the
Russian Empire and the east
Georgian kingdom of
Kartli-Kakheti, Kalb-Ali tried to establish contact with Russia. This action angered the
Qajar king of Iran,
Agha Mohammad Khan (), who as a result had Kalb-Ali seized and taken to
Tehran in 1796, where he was blinded. Another khan,
Mohammad Khan Qajar of Erivan, had attempted the same, but his Qajar ancestry saved him from the same punishment; he was instead put under house arrest. Following the assassination of Agha Mohammad Khan in 1797, Kalb-Ali went back to Nakhichevan, where he was appointed as its khan by Agha Mohammad Khan's successor,
Fath-Ali Shah Qajar (). In return, Kalb-Ali supplied Fath-Ali Shah's army with soldiers from the Kangarlu tribe. In 1809, Prince
Abbas Mirza annexed Nakhichevan and sent Kalb-Ali to Erivan. In Nakhichevan, he installed Kalb-Ali's sons, Nazar-Ali Beg and Abbas Qoli Agha, as his deputies. In 1808, during the
Russo-Persian War of 1804–1813, Russian forces under general
Gudovich briefly occupied Nakhichevan, but as a result of the
Treaty of Gulistan, it was returned to Persian control. In 1827, during the
Russo-Persian War of 1826–1828, Abbas Mirza appointed
Ehsan Khan Kangarlu as commander of
Abbasabad, a fortress of strategic importance for the defense of the Nakhichevan Khanate. conferred the rank of
major-general of the Russian army and the title of campaign
ataman of the Kangarlu militia. == Population ==